For the aft year in succession there was an Increase in the rates of wages pald in Great Britain during 1038 Changes in the rates of [wages resulted in an aggregate net increase of Jabout £260,000 per week for 2,360 people, and the grand total of addition to weekly full-time wage rates since 1983 has now risen to £1,708,- 000. Labour disputes involving stoppage of work have also tended to become less frequent. [They fell from 1,120 in 1937 to 800 in 1938, fand the number of workpeople involved in such disputes in 1038 was only 276,000, compared with 610,000 in the previous year, These Agures go far to explain what the chairman of [Barclays Bank recently referred to as the re-/markable stability of the British public's spend-ting power. The measure of such stability 19 also apparent in retail trade. In December last, {otal sales were two per cent, higher in value than in December 1937, and' in. the fashions departments, for instance, the rise during the leven months from February to December wor less than 09 per cent. Conditions in the boot and shoe trade may be taken as a reliable guide to the purchasing power of the public. Retail sales in this trade were somewhat larger in 1038 than In the preceding year, and the results of two leading concerns, which both manufacture and sell to the public, show that the past year was a comparatively stable profit-earning period for the boot and shoe industry. JOne of these firms made a slightly higher pr At at £60,000, while the profits of the other firm, at £157,000, were within £8,500 of its 1997" total.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.